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[quote user="Phoebe Vet"] Sam: General aviation is a bigger piece of the pie than you give them credit for.  There are more than 11,000 public use airports in the US and fewer than 200 of them are served by the airlines.....It is, in fact, the airlines that push for controlled airports. [/quote] According to the FAA Aerospace Fiscal Forecast for Fiscal Years 2006 - 217, in the base year 26.1 per cent of tower controlled take-offs and landings were by commercial carriers, whilst 35.1 per cent of center controlled traffic was attributed to commercial air.  The average of these two numbers is 30.6 per cent, which I rounded down to 30 per cent for simplicity purposes.  The 30 per cent refers to the proportional percentage of the total number of controlled operations; it does include all operations.  As you point out, VFR flights, which on a clear day can outnumber controlled flights, are not controlled directly.  However, in many instances, especially if the flights operate near a designated airway or terminal control area, the FAA tracks them and warns controlled aircraft of their presence.  I used 30 per cent as a conservative figure to allocate the $2.7 billion federal transfer (subsidy) attributed to the airlines.  If I use the percentage of commercial flights to total flights, including general aviation flights operating VFR, as well as military operations in civilian airspace, the percentage allocated to the airlines would be considerably less.  General aviation pilots buy fuel, amongst other things, which is taxed irrespective of whether they fly in a positive control environment or just kick the tire, light the fire, and tool around VFR.  They help pay for the FAA irrespective of the extent to which they use it.  This gets a bit a-field of the purpose of these forums.  However, many people seem to think that the airlines are heavily subsidized, which is not the case, and I think it is important to present the evidence showing that it is not so.
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